barchan

• barchane, barkan, barkhan

From Russian барха́н (barxán), from Kazakh барқан (barqan).

• IPA^(key): /bɑː(ɹ)ˈkɑːn/, /bɑː(ɹ)ˈxɑːn/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

barchan (plural barchans)

1. An arc-shaped sand ridge comprising well-sorted sand.
   • 1966, Edwin Sherbon Hills, Arid Lands: A Geographical Appraisal‎, page 72:

     The sand is usually very well sorted in barchans, for it is constantly re-worked as the dune ‘marches’. The marching also causes cross-bedding inside the barchan, with a dip parallel to the sand-fall face.

   • 1988, Robert Irwin, The Mysteries of Algiers, Dedalus, published 1993, page 69:

     But to follow the dunes around the foot of their slopes is also tedious and one can walk for half a kilometre east or west, finding one barchan linked to another and no easy way through […] .

   • 2008, Julie Laity, Deserts and Desert Environments‎, page 205:

     Barchans and transverse dunes are essentially of the same type, forming and migrating under a unidirectional wind regime. The difference between the two is related to the amount of sand: barchans are isolated mounds, whereas transverse dunes are composed of many barchans coalesced into a single, longer dune form (Tsoar 2001).

   • 2010, Robert S. Anderson, Suzanne P. Anderson, Geomorphology: The Mechanics and Chemistry of Landscapes‎, page 482:

     Perhaps the most distinctive is the barchan dune, an isolated crescentic form with arms that stretch downwind. Barchans are not huge, often with heights of only a few meters.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbar.xan/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -arxan
• Syllabification: bar‧chan

Inherited from Old Polish barchan, from Old High German barchan, from Arabic بركان.

barchan m inan

1. fustian

Borrowed from Kazakh барқан (barqan) or from Turkmen.

barchan m inan

1. barchan

   Hypernym: wydma

• barchan in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• barchan in Polish dictionaries at PWN